Highland Park teacher uses Twitter to teach 'Hamlet'

Courtesy of Diana O. Castro, handout

Pictured here talking with students, Highland Park High School teacher Faisal Mohyuddin is going to Uganda in April as part of a year-long fellowship with the federal Teacher for Global Classrooms program.

Pictured here talking with students, Highland Park High School teacher Faisal Mohyuddin is going to Uganda in April as part of a year-long fellowship with the federal Teacher for Global Classrooms program. (Courtesy of Diana O. Castro, handout)

Students in Faisal Mohyuddin's literature class recently created Twitter handles for characters in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

They tweeted comments such as "I miss my dad" and "No, it is not normal to get over a death in eight weeks," referring to Hamlet's father being killed in the Shakespearean tragedy.

This and other unique school projects are a result of Mohyuddin's year-long fellowship with a national program called Teachers for Global Classrooms.

Mohyuddin is one of 80 teachers selected from 800 applicants nationwide to learn ways to integrate global education into their classrooms. The teachers have taken an eight-week online graduate level course and met at a symposium. This April, Mohyuddin and 10 other teachers from schools across the country will visit Uganda for three weeks to learn about the culture and how students are taught English.

"One of the purposes of the program is to look beyond your own cultural framework," said Mohyuddin, whose parents emigrated from Pakistan to the U.S. in the 1970s. "The world is getting more globalized. Education is more globalized. We want to prepare young people who can interact with different cultures, who can recognize different points of view."

Colleges and businesses are looking for students and employees who are savvy about various cultures, he said. They want people to work collaboratively, he added, so he's incorporating more group projects into his teaching.

Courtesy of Diana O. Castro, handout

Pictured here talking to students, Highland Park High School teacher Faisal Mohyuddin is going to Uganda in April as part of a year-long fellowship with the federal Teacher for Global Classrooms program.

Pictured here talking to students, Highland Park High School teacher Faisal Mohyuddin is going to Uganda in April as part of a year-long fellowship with the federal Teacher for Global Classrooms program.

(Courtesy of Diana O. Castro, handout)

Global program leaders encouraged teachers to try social media in the classroom "in a meaningful way," said Mohyuddin, who's taught at Highland Park High School for 12 years.

"I never thought of social media in terms of doing analytical thinking and writing," he said. He also had never opened a Twitter account. So he learned about tweeting while students learned about Hamlet.

Students in a small group created their own handles accompanied by a photo of one of the characters in the play. For example, Hamlet's love interest, Ophelia's handle was @crazy_4hamlet. She tweeted, "I can't believe my dad is gone and I can't even begin to think that Hamlet is the reason why he is gone," referring to the fact that Hamlet accidentally killed her father.

Senior Ben Feldman, who worked on the Twitter project, said it was the first time he's used social media for a class, and that it's helped him understand Shakespeare better. "It's a new style of teaching," said Feldman, who is in Mohyuddin's AP literature class.

The Hamlet Twitter project was "about using contemporary technology, looking at the ways in which people connect with one another" and that's part of global education, Mohyuddin said.

Mohyuddin also instructed his students to research another culture and write about how the play would be produced in different countries and time periods, including Germany during the Hitler regime, ancient Mayan culture and modern-day South Korea.

"The story of Hamlet is about his mental well-being," said senior Isa Spoerry, also in the AP literature class."We learned that in South Korea, mental health is a pretty taboo topic."

Yet, with help from Mohyuddin, the students discovered a recent production of Hamlet in South Korea that began with the famous to-be-or-not-to-be scene, when Hamlet contemplates suicide.

"I was surprised," said Spoerry "But I think it could be symbolic of the evolution of the culture. They're using a play like Hamlet to open up dialogue on mental illness. I think this is a great way to do that.

"The most recent thing we did as a class was partnering up completely randomly telling our partners a story about ourselves," said Spoerry. "There was a lot relating to identity and culture. For the rest of the assignment, each partner typed up the other one's story. Then we told the stories in class."

That project was inspired by Mohyuddin's work as an educator adviser for Narrative 4, he said. Narrative 4 fosters empathy by breaking down barriers through the exchange of stories worldwide. Mohyuddin has also created story exchanges among his class and students from Evanston Township and inner city high schools.

"It was all about empathy and understanding, which I'm sure are the foundations of global education," said Spoerry about the story exchange. "Our teacher told us we needed to be attentive and have compassion and be aware that we're being trusted with something that's very special to the other person."

A published poet and avid reader, Mohyuddin said the global education program as well as Narrative 4 and other initiatives have furthered his ability to teach globally.

"It would be nice to do even more work to get students connected to other cultures," he said.